John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 2 (of 2)

About eight o'clock the next morning my Pole came into my room. He had returned from Peterhoff before me, and found waiting for him his second epistle, with a note from the mother of the young lady, which he read to me as I lay in bed. Though more than half asleep, I was rather roused by the strange effect this letter had upon him, for he was now encouraged to go on with his suit, since he found that the backwardness of the young lady was to be ascribed to the influence of the mother, and not to any indifference on her part.

In the afternoon I went to a boatrace between English amateurs that had excited some interest among the English residents. The boats were badly matched; a six-oared boat thirty-two feet long, and weighing two hundred and thirty pounds, being pitted against three pairs of sculls, with a boat twenty-eight feet long and weighing only one hundred and eight pounds. One belonged to the English legation and the other to some English merchants. The race was from the English Quay to the bridge opposite the Suwarrow monument at the foot of the Summer Garden, and back, a little more than two miles each way. The rapidity of the current was between two and three miles an hour, though its full strength was avoided by both boats keeping in the eddies along shore. It was a beautiful place for a boatrace; the banks of the Neva were lined with spectators, and the six-oared boat beat easily, performing the distance in thirty-one minutes.

The next morning, in company with a Frenchman lately arrived at our hotel, I set out for the imperial palace of Czarskoselo, about seventeen versts from St. Petersburgh. About seven versts from the city we passed the imperial seat of Zechenne, built by the Empress Catharine to commemorate the victory obtained by Orloff over the Turks on the coast of Anatolia. The edifice is in the form of a Turkish pavilion, with a central rotunda containing the full-length portraits of the sovereigns cotemporary with Catharine. Since her death this palace has been deserted. In eighteen hundred and twenty-five, Alexander and the empress passed it on their way to the south of Russia, and about eight months after their mortal remains found shelter in it for a night, on their way to the imperial sepulchre. There was no other object of interest on the road until we approached Czarskoselo. Opposite the "Caprice Gate" is a cluster of white houses, in two rows, of different sizes, diminishing as they recede from the road, and converging at the farthest extremity; altogether a bizarre arrangement, and showing the magnificence of Russian gallantry. The Empress Catharine at the theatre one night happened to express her pleasure at the perspective view of a small town, and the next time she visited Czarskoselo she saw the scene realized in a town erected by Count Orloff at immense expense before the gate of the palace. The façade of the palace is unequalled by any royal residence in the world, being twelve hundred feet in length. Originally, every statue, pedestal, and capital of the numerous columns; the vases, carvings, and other ornaments in front, were covered with gold leaf, the gold used for that purpose amounting to more than a million of ducats. In a few years the gilding wore off, and the contractors engaged in repairing it offered the empress nearly half a million of rubles (silver) for the fragments of gold; but the empress scornfully refused, saying, "Je ne suis pas dans l'usage de vendre mes vielles hardes." I shall not attempt to carry the reader through the magnificent apartments of this palace. But I must not forget the famed amber chamber, the whole walls and ceilings being of amber, some of the pieces of great size, neatly fitted together, and even the frames of the pictures an elaborate workmanship of the same precious material. But even this did not strike me so forcibly as when, conducted through a magnificent apartment, the walls covered with black paper shining like ebony, and ornamented with gold and immense looking-glasses, the footman opened a window at the other end, and we looked down into the chapel, an Asiatic structure, presenting an ensemble of rich gilding of surpassing beauty, every part of it, the groups of columns, the iconastos, and the gallery for the imperial family, resplendent with gold. In one of the staterooms where the empress's mother resides, the floor consists of a parquet of fine wood inlaid with wreaths of mother-of-pearl, and the panels of the room were incrusted with lapis lazuli.

But to me all these magnificent chambers were as nothing compared with those which were associated with the memory of the late occupant. "Uneasy rests the head that wears a crown;" and perhaps it is for this reason that I like to look upon the pillow of a king, far more on that of a queen. The bedchamber of Catharine II. is adorned with walls of porcelain and pillars of purple glass; the bedclothes are those under which she slept the last time she was at the palace, and in one place was a concealed door, by which, as the unmannerly footman, without any respect to her memory, told us, her imperial highness admitted her six-feet paramours. In the bedchamber of Alexander were his cap, gloves, boots, and other articles of dress, lying precisely as he left them previous to his departure for the southern part of his empire. His bed was of leather, stuffed with straw, and his boots were patched over and over worse than mine, which I had worn all the way from Paris. I tried on his cap and gloves, and moralized over his patched boots. I remembered Alexander as the head of a gigantic empire, the friend and ally, and then the deadly foe of Napoleon; the companion of kings and princes; the arbiter of thrones and empires, and playing with crowns and sceptres. I sat with the patched boots in my hand. Like old Peter, he had considerable of a foot, and I respected him for it. I saw him, as it were, in an undress, simple and unostentatious in his habits; and there was a domestic air in his whole suite of apartments that interested me more than when I considered him on his throne. His sitting-room showed quiet and gentlemanly as well as domestic habits, for along the wall was a border of earth, with shrubs and flowers growing out of it, a delicate vine trailed around and almost covering a little mahogany railing. The grounds around the palace are eighteen miles in circumference, abounding in picturesque and beautiful scenery, improved by taste and an unbounded expenditure of money, and at this time they were in the fulness of summer beauty. We may talk simplicity and republicanism, but, after all, it must be a pleasant thing to be an emperor. I always felt this, particularly when strolling through imperial parks or pleasure-grounds, and sometimes I almost came to the unsentimental conclusion that, to be rural, a man must be rich.

We wandered through the grounds without any plan, taking any path that offered, and at every step some new beauty broke upon us: a theatre; Turkish kiosk or Chinese pagoda; splendid bridges, arches, and columns; and an Egyptian gate; a summer-house in the form of an Ionic colonnade, a masterpiece of taste and elegance, supporting an aerial garden crowded with flowers; and a Gothic building called the Admiralty, on the borders of an extensive lake, on which lay several boats—rigged as frigates, elegant barges and pleasure-boats, and beautiful white swans floating majestically upon its surface; on the islands and the shores of the lake were little summer-houses; at the other end was a magnificent stone landing, and in full view a marble bridge, with Corinthian columns of polished marble; an arsenal, with many curious and interesting objects, antique suits of armour, and two splendid sets of horse trappings, holsters, pistols, and bridles, all studded with diamonds, presented by the sultan on occasion of the peace of Adrianople. Nor must I forget the dairy, and a superb collection of goats and lamas from Siberia. Amid this congregation of beauties one thing offended me; a Gothic tower built as a ruin for the sake of the picturesque, which, wanting the associations connected with monuments ruined by time, struck me as a downright mockery. We had intended to visit the palace of Paulowsky, but time slipped away, and it was six o'clock before we started to return to St. Petersburgh.